How Freight Forwarders Receive International Payments in India

Indian freight forwarders are paid by overseas agents through a wire to your bank, or through a receiving account run by a payments platform.

A wire can land in rupees or in a foreign-currency account in India, the Exchange Earners Foreign Currency (EEFC) account. That is how freight forwarders receive international payments in India, and your bank issues proof that each payment arrived.

A service billed to an overseas agent is normally a zero-rated export of services when you file a Letter of Undertaking (LUT) for GST. From 1 October 2026 the period to bring the money in is 9 months (12 if invoiced in INR), and your bank assigns a purpose code to each receipt.

Forwarding work adds its own questions: agent balances that run both ways, which purpose code fits freight and commission charges, where GST treats your service as supplied, and the deadlines that follow each payment.

Getting those right decides how smoothly freight forwarders collect from agents abroad.

Your overseas agents and clients usually pay against an invoice or a debit note in their own currency. The route you give them decides how the money travels, what proof you get and which limits apply.

If you need only the general routes for any Indian business, the guide on how to receive international payments covers them.

Freight forwarding companies that pay overseas carriers or agents in the same currency often weigh an EEFC account against a platform account. The comparison of an EEFC account vs payment platform sets out that choice for you.

Pick the route by how you spend the money as well as how you receive it.

Collecting through our accounts

: we give you local receiving account details in the agent's own currency, so the agent pays by a local transfer in its country, and the money reaches your Indian bank account within 1 business day of withdrawal.

The sequence is the same whichever route you choose. What changes is who credits you and how fast the paperwork arrives.

Follow these steps for every overseas receipt so the bank can match the payment to your invoice and close it against your export record.

1. Raise the invoice or debit note in the agent's currency, naming the services: freight, handling, documentation or commission. File the LUT before you invoice, then mark the invoice as a supply for export without payment of tax.
2. File the export declaration for services. The export regulations allow you to file one Export Declaration Form (EDF) within 30 days from the end of the month in which you raised the invoice, covering several overseas recipients.
3. The agent pays by wire, by local transfer into your receiving account, or through a group company your bank has accepted.
4. Your bank credits the money and assigns a purpose code that describes the service, such as transport services or commission.
5. You receive proof of the receipt. The bank issues a FIRA. An eFIRA is its electronic form, generated by the bank as digital proof of the money coming into India.
6. The bank closes the export record once the money is realised within the deadline, or once it has approved a set-off against what you owe the same agent.

Keep each FIRA or eFIRA with the matching invoice as proof of receipt for audit and any bank query about an open export entry.

Matching them as each payment lands keeps your export entries from staying open after you have been paid.

Your proof from us

: for every withdrawal you get a free FIRA issued by a bank authorised by the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), and you can download the eFIRA within 24 hours at no additional cost.

Forwarding runs both ways. An agent in Europe owes you for exports you handled, while you owe the same agent for imports they cleared.

Settling only the difference is tempting, but the export regulations allow it in one specific form only, and an informal netting arrangement can leave both invoices open in your bank's records.

Regulation 7 of the export regulations says your bank "may allow set-off of export receivables against import payables" with the same overseas buyer or supplier, or with its overseas group or associate companies.

That set-off must happen inside the realisation period, or inside an extension your bank has granted. Your bank decides whether to allow it.

• Allowed: a set-off your bank approves, between what you are owed and what you owe the same agent or its group, inside the deadline.
• Not covered by Regulation 7: offsetting balances between unrelated agents, or simply paying the difference without asking your bank, which leaves the gross amounts unsettled on paper.
• Small shortfalls: your bank may accept a reduced or unpaid amount of up to ₹10 lakh per services invoice on your declaration.

Platforms licensed as payment aggregators for cross-border payments work under a stricter rule. The RBI requires them to keep inward and outward funds apart, and it permits no netting of the two under any circumstances.

If you plan to settle agent balances by set-off, that request goes to your bank.

No RBI purpose code is named freight forwarding or logistics. Your bank maps each receipt to the closest RBI code, based on what your invoice says.

Describe each charge clearly and confirm the code with your bank before the first payment arrives.

Codes for shipping lines and airlines also exist, and the full list of RBI purpose codes carries them.

The two codes you will meet most have their own pages:

• Transport and handling charges: the P0213 purpose code covers stevedoring, demurrage and port handling billed abroad.
• Commission on shipments: the P1002 purpose code covers commission on exports and imports.

A wrong code can cause queries and mismatches in your GST and audit records. If your invoices mix freight and commission, ask your bank whether to split them into separate invoices with one code each.

For most services you sell to an overseas agent, the place of supply is the location of the recipient, under section 13(2) of the Integrated GST (IGST) Act.

Two older exceptions no longer apply: the goods transport rule in section 13(9) was omitted from 1 October 2023, and the intermediary rule in section 13(8)(b) was omitted from 30 March 2026.

That change matters to logistics firms that act as agents rather than principals. Before those omissions, an intermediary's place of supply was its own location in India.

Now the recipient's location decides, so a forwarder acting as an agent for an overseas principal can meet the export test like any other supplier.

Section 2(6) of the IGST Act treats your service as an export only when all five conditions hold:

• You are in India: the supplier of the service is located in India.
• The agent is abroad: the recipient is located outside India.
• The place of supply is outside India: which section 13(2) usually settles in your favour.
• Payment arrives in convertible foreign exchange: or in rupees where the RBI permits it.
• The agent is not your own branch: you and the agent must not be merely establishments of a distinct person.

When those conditions hold, the export is zero-rated under section 16, and you can supply without paying IGST by filing an LUT in Form GST RFD-11 under Rule 96A. You then claim a refund of unused input tax credit.

The steps for filing and claiming sit in the guide to export of services under GST.

Three things follow each receipt: the deadline to bring the money in, where you hold it, and the proof that it arrived. Each has a fixed rule you can check against your own receipts.

An EEFC account suits you if you pay overseas carriers in the same currency you collect, because you avoid converting twice. Rupees you withdraw from it cannot be credited back.

The full rules for opening and running one are in the guide to the EEFC account.

We built Xflow for Indian businesses that bill clients abroad, and freight forwarders fit that pattern when agents pay in USD, EUR, GBP or other currencies.

We hold final Payment Aggregator Cross Border (PA-CB) authorisation from the RBI, as of February 2026.

• Currencies covered: our receiving accounts support 25+ currencies, so freight agents in Germany, the UK or the US each pay in their own currency.
• What you pay: our FX rates are linked to inter-bank or mid-market rates, and we charge the variable fee as an FX mark-up. Starter is a flat USD 12 for invoices up to USD 2,000, then 0.6% above; Growth is a flat USD 20 up to USD 5,000, then 0.4% above. Scale offers custom pricing from USD 10,000, and all plans are on our pricing page.

Two limits apply because of our licence.

Each inward transaction through us is capped at ₹25 lakh, as it is for every PA-CB. We also keep inward and outward funds separate and do not net agent balances, so where you need a set-off with an agent, your bank handles that under Regulation 7.

For freight forwarders, that means routine agent invoices go through local accounts with us, while set-offs stay with your bank. Each withdrawal through us comes with a free FIRA, and you can download the eFIRA within 24 hours.